Independent mortgage broker - obtaining CAS

[GDT5]

Hi

I am after some advice please.

My wife and I have been thinking about a career change where we are more in charge of our own time, currently I work as a management consultant the insurance industry and she as a management consultant in data, we earn good salaries, but we are slaves to the city.

We were thinking of doing our CEMAP exams, I have read that there are effectively two stages to becoming qualified to the point where you can go it alone, firstly the exams and secondly obtaining CAS.

Our plan is to do the exams and slowly set up a part time mortgage broking business(5 year plan), initially after hours and then slowly grow it to a point where we can leave our city careers after lets say 5 years and go full time with the mortgage broking business.

I read to obtain CAS, a network is needed to mentor you for min 6 – 12 months before you can be directly authorized but how do you get accepted by a network if you are a start up broker with no turnover.

Due to our existing careers it wouldn't make financial sense to go and work for a broker so my question is, what would the best option for us be, taking into account our 5 year plan and the fact that we want to set this business up part time before we leave our city career’s .

How do we go about obtaining CAS if networks require you to have a certain turnover?

Regards

 

[tony84]

Thats not quite right...

You would usually joint a network and get signed off with CAS. Once you have done it long enough, you can than choose to go directly authorised, but you can stay under a network.

You would only get signed off to be directly authorised by the FCA once you have enough experience - 6-12 months will probably not be enough. Aside from that, you would probably be better staying under the network until you are able to dedicate enough time to the venture. The network will take care of things like compliance, gabriel returns, pii etc.

However, from a practical point of view, what happens when your customers want to speak to you during the day? What happens when an underwriter calls you? How can you do CPD (you would not be able to meet up with account managers and go to seminars etc).

You also need to think about whether a network will take you on with no experience, no customers and no real commitment from either of you. I think you may struggle. I am taking on a new girl next week, because she is a single parent and has bills to pay I have agreed to take her phone calls for 3 months. After that she needs to either make the jump, we leave it or she pays for someone to do her admin. 5 years is taking the P a bit, your customers are buying the biggest purchase of their lives but they have a broker who is doing it after work? How will you sell that one to them?